The Radical Lives Of Helen Keller

Despite her disabilities, Helen Keller worked tirelessly for human rights and other political issues.

A political biography that reveals new sides to Helen Keller Several decades after her death in 1968, Helen Keller remains one of the most widely recognized women of the twentieth century. But the fascinating story of her vivid political life—particularly her interest in radicalism and anti-capitalist activism—has been largely overwhelmed by the sentimentalized story of her as a young deaf-blind girl. Keller had many lives indeed. Best known for her advocacy on behalf of the blind, she was also a member of the socialist party, an advocate of women's suffrage, a defender of the radical International Workers of the World, and a supporter of birth control—and she served as one of the nation's most effective but unofficial international ambassadors. In spite of all her political work, though, Keller rarely explored the political dimensions of disability, adopting beliefs that were often seen as conservative, patronizing, and occasionally repugnant. Under the wing of Alexander Graham Bell, a controversial figure in the deaf community who promoted lip-reading over sign language, Keller became a proponent of oralism, thereby alienating herself from others in the deaf community who believed that a rich deaf culture was possible through sign language. But only by distancing herself from the deaf community was she able to maintain a public image as a one-of-a-kind miracle. Using analytic tools and new sources, Kim E. Nielsen's political biography of Helen Keller has many lives, teasing out the motivations for and implications of her political and personal revolutions to reveal a more complex and intriguing woman than the Helen Keller we thought we knew.

Biographies and Autobiographies.

“[My life] is so rich with blessings—an immense capacity of enjoyment, books, and beloved friends. . . . Most earnestly I pray the dear Heavenly Father that I may sometime make myself far more worthy of the love shown to me than I am now.” —April 22, 1900 letter from Helen Keller to John Hitz, AFB When Helen Keller died in 1968, at the age of eighty-eight years old, she was one of the most widely known women in the world. The overnight success of her biography, The Story of My Life, written at age twenty-three, made it obvious to Keller that she was endowed with a gift for writing and speaking. As she got older, she increasingly began to do both on a variety of subjects extending beyond her own disability, including social, political, and theological issues. Helen Keller: Selected Writings collects Keller’s personal letters, political writings, speeches, and excerpts of her published materials from 1887 to 1968. The book also includes an introductory essay by Kim E. Nielsen, headnotes to each document, and a selected bibliography of work by and about Keller. The majority of the letters and some prints, all drawn from the Helen Keller Archives at the American Foundation for the Blind in New York, are being published for the first time. Literature, education, advocacy, politics, religion, travel: the many interests of Helen Keller culminate in this book and are reflected in her spirited narration. Also portrayed are the individuals Keller inspired and took inspiration from, including her teacher Annie Sullivan, her family, and others with whom she formed friendships throughout the course of her life. This often charming collection revels in and preserves Keller’s public and private life, coming to us in the year which marks the 125th anniversary of her birthday.

A brief biography highlights some of the struggles and accomplishments in the life of Helen Keller.

Draws on the archives of Helen Keller's estate and the unpublished memoirs of Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, to trace Keller's transformation from a furious girl to a world-renowned figure.

The first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present Disability is not just the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, however, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy. A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell American history through the eyes, words, and impressions of the people who lived it. As historian and disability scholar Nielsen argues, to understand disability history isn’t to narrowly focus on a series of individual triumphs but rather to examine mass movements and pivotal daily events through the lens of varied experiences. Throughout the book, Nielsen deftly illustrates how concepts of disability have deeply shaped the American experience—from deciding who was allowed to immigrate to establishing labor laws and justifying slavery and gender discrimination. Included are absorbing—at times horrific—narratives of blinded slaves being thrown overboard and women being involuntarily sterilized, as well as triumphant accounts of disabled miners organizing strikes and disability rights activists picketing Washington. Engrossing and profound, A Disability History of the United States fundamentally reinterprets how we view our nation’s past: from a stifling master narrative to a shared history that encompasses us all.

From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. “[A] thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy." —The New Yorker There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind.” For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil). Godin—who began losing her vision at age ten—illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history. A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.

Helen Keller worked for AFB from 1924 until her death in 1968. Her responsibilities included advocating for more and better services, fighting discrimination and negative attitudes, and fundraising. Helen Keller's and Anne Sullivan Macy's photos and unpublished papers today form the Helen Keller Archives at AFB. For information about access to the Helen Keller Archives or permission to use photos and writings from the collection, contact Permissions, M.C. Migel Memorial Library, in writing, at AFB headquarters in New York City. The intimate story of two women whose lives were bound together in a unique relationship marked by genius, dependence, and love. Lash traces Anne Sullivan's early years in a Massachusetts poorhouse, describes her meeting with Helen Keller in Alabama, and goes on to recount the joint events of their lives: Helen's childhood experiences, education at Radcliffe, and work in vaudeville, politics, and for the blind.

A moving portrait of Anne Sullivan Macy, teacher of Helen Keller—and a complex, intelligent woman worthy of her own spotlight After many years, historian and Helen Keller expert Kim Nielsen realized that she and her peers had failed Anne Sullivan Macy. While Macy is remembered primarily as Helen Keller's teacher and a straightforward educational superhero, the real story of this brilliant, complex, and misunderstood woman has never been completely told. Beyond the Miracle Worker seeks to correct this oversight, presenting a new tale about the wounded but determined woman and her quest for a successful, meaningful life. Born in 1866 to poverty-stricken Irish immigrants, Macy suffered part of her childhood in the Massachusetts State Almshouse at Tewksbury. Seeking escape, in love with literature, and profoundly stubborn, she successfully fought to gain an education at the Perkins School for the Blind. She went on to teach Helen Keller, who became a loyal and lifelong friend. As Macy floundered with her own blindness, ill health, depression, and marital strife in her later years, she came to lean on her former student for emotional, physical, and economic support. Based on privately held primary source material—including materials at both the American Foundation for the Blind and the Perkins School for the Blind—Beyond the Miracle Worker is revelatory and absorbing, unraveling one of the best known and least understood friendships of the twentieth century.